Farmworkers are furious at Senator Kevin de Leon for blocking the translation of their public comments against ALRB board member Genevieve Shiroma. De Leon is famous for his insistence on bilingual and multilingual translations, but when it came to the Rules Committee hearing he chaired June 20 on Shiroma’s re-appointment, the Senate president would not allow it. A Pick Justice spokesman wrote to de Leon to express how upset the…

The local Reedley newspaper ran a feature about our recent protest at the Fresno courthouse, making mention of our larger-than-life caricature of ALRB’s disgraced board member Genevieve Shiroma. The Reedley Exponent story reported that about 100 farmworkers showed up at the Fifth District Court of Appeals on April 20, “on the heels of an April 15 ruling by the state’s Agricultural Labor Relations Board that supported throwing out the results of…

The energetic turnout at the April 20 courthouse rally in Fresno was a real family gathering. Present and future farmworkers gathered to support transparency and ethical behavior in the troubled Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB). They protested the ALRB’s secrecy, cronyism with the UFW, and corruption of the democratic process under California law. Some of the members of the three-judge appeals panel took note of our rally. Inside the courthouse,…

The farmworker who has led the fight for her fellow laborers to have the right to vote on union representation is calling for a probe of the UFW’s unfair labor practices. Seldom is a union accused of unfair labor practices, but farmworker Silvia Lopez isn’t taking it any more. The San Joaquin Valley fruit farm laborer also alleges that the ALRB has silenced workers who oppose the UFW in order…

An important agricultural advocacy group has seen our latest video and likes it. The Western Growers Association re-posted our new video about ALRB corruption, calling our story “powerful.” “PickJustice.com, a website dedicated to farm workers’ rights, recently posted a video charging the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board and the United Farm Workers Union with colluding to prevent the farmworkers’ votes from being counted in a decertification election demanded by the…

Word is spreading nationwide that ALRB Chairman William Gould has admitted that California’s agricultural unions aren’t doing their job, and that farm workers don’t want the unions. Gould’s January 28 admission to a business group in Monterey has made the news in Washington, DC. Not only did Gould accuse the agricultural unions of failing to organize in the fields, as we reported yesterday. Gould said that, ever since he has…

California farmworkers explain why they think the ALRB is a corrupt, exploitative state agency that abuses them by trying to force them to join a politically-connected union. Many of the workers, who came to America as immigrants, express dismay that the type of political corruption in their native countries is alive and well in California. “Perhaps they think that we are ignorant,” says one worker. “Perhaps they think that we…

Genevieve Shiroma should be disqualified from serving on the ALRB because of her long-standing financial and political connections to the UFW, a farmworker says in a massive 267-page brief. Through her attorney, farmworker Silvia Lopez says she “has been denied due process and a fair hearing in this matter due to prosecutorial misconduct, and faces a further violation of her statutory and Constitutional rights due if Member Shiroma is permitted…